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| NINE-CARD GRID |
It was
blowing snow this morning as I watched a thirty-something fellow in his
hospital jammies and robe run past my RDX. (I was on my way home from Gold’s
Gym.)
I’m assuming he was AWOL from the
Psychiatric Ward at the General Hospital, near where I live. Reflecting on this … I should have beeped my
horn and offered him a ride to wherever.
I was going the opposite direction when he ran by and I did make a U
turn in this attempt but … he disappeared.
This blog is
about the shuffle of life and about the cards that we’re dealt, the cards we’re
dealt again and again. Presumably, this runaway patient was
trying to re-shuffle the deck in his life, in his current situation,
as all of us are constantly re-shuffling and re-reading the cards we’re dealt.
Some of us,
guys like me, were dealt a winning hand from the get-go. I’m tall (six foot one); I’m dark (but now a
bleached California surfer); I’m very middle-class; and I’m male sex and
gender. None of these aforementioned privileges were earned; they just are.
Recently I
went for a card reading, the perfect example of projective psychology in
commercial action. For one hundred
dollars, under the direction of the card seer, I re-evaluated my life,
accordingly, to my desired outcome.
Reading
regular decks of cards is called CARTOMANCY.
Here are some of the most common readings:
KING OF HEARTS … a loving male family member.
QUEEN OF
HEARTS … a loving female family member.
KING OF
DIAMONDS … a wealthy male in a position of authority.
QUEEN OF
DIAMONDS … a wealthy female in a position of authority.
KING OF
CLUBS … a business man with sexual desire.
QUEEN OF
CLUBS … a business woman with social desire.
KING OF
SPADES … an ambitious male outsider who is arrogant and
deceptive.
QUEEN OF
SPADES … an ambitious female outsider who is cold and
calculating.
Some other
divines from a regular deck suggest that HEARTS represent WATER, DIAMONDS
represent EARTH, CLUBS represent FIRE, and SPADES represent AIR.
Typically,
the client will shuffle the deck as much as is satisfactory to the client and
then the diviner offers three-card spreads. From left to right those three-card spreads represent the past, present,
and future. These three-card spreads
usually extend up to a nine-card grid, three cards in three rows.
Cartomancy
is really another form of projective testing.
Projective tests, usually reserved for therapeutic settings, provide the
client-participant with an ambiguous stimulus, which in turn reveals the
underlying motivations and attitudes of those client-participants. The most famous projective test is the
Rorschach Inkblot (see my blog, INKSPOTS AND BLOGSPOTS: A BUSKOLOGIST
PERSPECTIVE published March 20th, 2016).
A card
diviner/reader/seer has the unique esemplastic ability to shape all of these
singular cards distributed on the nine-card grid, into a whole and unified life
projection (picture). And so, too, does
the client, under the guidance of the seer. So when and if
the KING or QUEEN OF SPADES shows up, look out! I think you get the picture.
A thumbnail
sketch of my reading:
I am intelligent and outgoing (which I’m sure was determined not by the cards, but by the phatic chat before my cards were dealt). I am having difficulty with someone close; someone in my life is both greedy and angry; I am destined to travel; I need to immediately take the reins of my own sweet chariot.
That fellow
on the run through the snow banks, still in his hospital vestments, was at the
very least, in the throes of attempting to grapple with the reins of his own chariot. In our
social and work lives rarely do we get to deal our own cards, and once the cards
are dealt, we have little option but to play the cards we’ve been dealt. Most of us play our cards with the accords of
social convention; whereas, there is always a statistical few who do not. The number of people committing crime, for
example, is a number that is static. Playing a
game of solitaire is not only lonely, it is delusional. We primates of the human condition are featherless
and gregarious creatures, loving the notion of community and social
competition. Not many among us prefer to
be scriveners in dimly lit libraries or in the moonlit stairwells of lighthouses. Not many among us want someone else to shuffle our playing cards or ... to mix the metaphor ... take over the reins of our chariots.
Meanwhile, back
at the busking ranch …
As a
projective test, the cards can certainly be energizing and enlightening for
some, while being enervating and draining for others. Human life is macedoine of struggle and
success, and wherever we happen to be in either a struggle or success, we all been knocked about and
knackered to get there. Admittedly,
cartomancy seems to better fit those for us who tend to be laissez-faire or libertine in attitude,
each card a memento of what WE REALLY WANT TO DO. No matter how many times we shuffle the deck, our cards will always read that we can do what WE REALLY WANT TO DO.
We buskers most
certainly fall into the catalogue of laissez-faire and/or the libertine
catalogue of the human condition. And
because we can be catalogued as such ...
Buskers are among those who have gripped the reins of their own chariots, with little regard for the optics of other social judges.
